Across America, cities are undertaking brand campaigns – and with rather awful results. Rolling out these kinds of programs is big business, and there are high-priced rankings to prove it and drive the city brand sales cycle. The time for the current approach has come and gone. Something more human and engaged is required.

A few examples are in order:

Atlanta claims “everyday is an opening day,” hoping to rekindle the spirit of what was a fairly unmemorable Olympics to begin with (if one excepts domestic terrorist attacks and local governmental homophobia from the memory banks) and apply it with inflationary ubiquity. When everyday is allegedly special, no day is.

St. Louis notes that it is “perfectly centered, remarkably connected,” suggesting its Midwestern geography reflects a particularly balanced and in-touch mindset. Forget annoying facts that contradict: population centers have shifted substantially, and the region’s airport lost its hub status when local economic development officials could not retain American Airlines. Fewer businesses and people able to reach fewer places is a truer story.

New Orleans, a near ghost town ignored by federal officials, claims to be “jazzed” that tourists are visiting again. With more than half of the beleaguered city’s residents either gone or still in FEMA “temporary” trailers, one suspects the claim is well-intentioned marketing gloss. And, the majority of street musicians who might provide the actual “jazz,” are below the poverty level, truth be known.

The challenges of these American efforts are highlighted by the current fervor over the London 2012 Olympic Games brand. While not a city brand, per se, the London Games’ “flexible, modern” identity has been widely decried for not “representing London” adequately. Not everyone – and, indeed, perhaps the minority of us – actually see London as flexible and modern, it seems. Perhaps they will by 2012.

Despite the work of fine strategists across the board, all of these branding efforts fail based on one key element: they do not tell the truth of the place. They may tell a version of the truth or a desired truth, but to work as a brand, that’s not enough.

Great brands have a truth so deep and evident that they become part of life itself, not a slogan on the edge of the action. In other words, brands make promises that the people behind them can keep – and want to keep. Where cities are concerned, politics and bureaucracy are the devils that disrupt the details.

Add to this the outdated notion of branding that most cities are tarred with: one idea reflected by one image, one identity, one color, one tagline. Some would have cities believe that only New York can equal “exciting.” That Paris owns “romance.” That Milan corners the market on “style.” Boring. But clichés often are.

Sophisticated brands today capture nuance and texture; they are multilayered and changing and alive (from this perspective alone, the London work is remarkable even if the focus of it flawed). Today, brands are cultural currency, not controlled intellectual property, and the case applies even more so for cities. As with most things, government gets the last coughs of a dying approach because of little vision and even less budget to lead when the time is ripe for the new.

Cities would do better to think in terms of a “psychology of place.” Doing so will allow for a broader, malleable and constantly personal sense of civic identity. And, the approach allows for both majority and minority voices to be heard alongside the corporate voices that normally fund such efforts.

Like people, the psychology that makes up any place is complex and often indirect. Before we can talk about “San Francisco” as a brand, for example, we must understand it as a place. Doing so requires us to know and appreciate and incorporate The Haight and The Castro…the Financial District and Nob Hill…the tourist traps and the homeless…the open-minded snobbery and the high design of studied nonchalance. In fact, San Francisco doesn’t exist – literally or in our public imagination – without all of these things in carefully balanced juxtaposition. There is more than one idea here.

And, like it or not, Atlanta doesn’t exist without racial politics running hand-in-hand with corporate hubris. The Old South is the first chapter of the New South. St. Louis doesn’t exist without the cranky “Show Me” attitude of its home state. Stubbornness might be a virtue in an age where too many hucksters take to the airwaves. And New Orleans doesn’t exist without the rich, confused, naked, natural-disastered, vomiting and voo-dooing all jammed together (sometimes in one person). These more complex psychologies of each place go well beyond “opening,” “centered” or “jazzed.” They are less corporate, much messier and infinitely truer. Capturing them is also more difficult than traditional brand approaches can accommodate.

In the end, cities need to focus on the notion of character – from their cultural gems, irreplaceable charms and quirks, and inimitable local folk. Neighborhoods make up cities; and characters make up neighborhoods. Start with them – not the goal of a “national identity” – and the truth of the place reveals itself in ways completely real and utterly original. Truth, it may be, is a great competitive advantage.

In Atlanta, find Tom Murphy and the restaurant that created Virginia-Highlands. Find the stories of Ponce de Leon Avenue. Find Cabbagetown and College Park, too. Ask Ted Turner his current thoughts on CNN while he enjoys a bison burger downtown on Luckie Street.

Head to St. Louis, and look up Joe Edwards and The Loop he has restored building at the time. Connect with Uncle Bill’s Pancake House . Sit center grass at Shakespeare in the Park. See where the infamous Pruitt-Igoe once stood, and understand the real heart of the country.

Share some love with New Orleans. Stop in and talk with Aidan Gill on Magazine Street. Savor the handmade savories and sweets at Sucre. Pay homage at the levee that broke (it is located in the backyard of what was once someone’s dream home, in what was once a fine neighborhood, all more human and more lost than imaginable). Talk with a local judge about Napoleonic law to feel a country apart.

America’s cities have bigger stories to tell – more human stories to tell – than current brand campaigns allow. Perhaps that’s because cities are not products to be pushed, but places to be discovered.

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